Ep. 1647 - BREAKING： Devastating Fires Destroy Los Angeles
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.53374
Summary
As President Trump s return to the White House reorders world politics, from killing corporate policies to toppling governments, Mark Zuckerberg makes a major announcement about the future of conservative speech on Facebook. And it s good news.
Transcript
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As President Trump's return to the White House reorders world politics,
00:00:04.040
from killing corporate DEI policies to toppling governments,
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Mark Zuckerberg makes a major announcement about the future of conservative speech
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on Facebook. And it's good news. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. Los Angeles is on fire. Los Angeles is often on fire,
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but this time Los Angeles is really, really on fire from Pasadena all the way over to Malibu.
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So we're all praying for the people in LA. However, these fires are not just caused
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by natural elements. There are a lot of political elements going on here too
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that underlie the severity of the fires. There's so much more to say. First though,
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Mark Zuckerberg comes out yesterday in t-shirt, gold chain, a watch that I think costs upwards of a
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million dollars. He's in his rapper era. He's hip. He's cool. He's so hip and cool that he realizes
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which way the political winds are blowing. And he is not only acknowledging that Facebook has been
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censoring conservatives, he promises that Facebook is going to stop censoring conservatives.
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And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
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The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing
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speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our
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policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here's what we're
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going to do. First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes
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similar to X starting in the U.S. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote
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non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those
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concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically
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biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S. So over the next
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couple of months, we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system.
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Second, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on
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topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.
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What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions
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and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far.
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Better late than never, I guess. I remember when these conversations were starting up between Facebook
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and content creators and news outlets. Eight years ago? Nine years ago?
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I remember being involved in some of those conversations.
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And at the time, Facebook said, no, no, we've got to take serious action here. They were getting a ton
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of pressure from the left. In a way, I kind of pity Mark Zuckerberg. They were getting pressure from
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Elizabeth Warren. They were being blamed for allowing the Mango Mussolini to win the 2016 election.
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The Daily Wire was the biggest thing on Facebook. We were the biggest news commentary producer on
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Facebook. We were absolutely crushing. And then one day, Facebook decided to kill our reach by 90%.
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That was not some organic change that happened because of new market desires and forces.
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That was a decision top down at Facebook. Kill conservatives, specifically kill Daily Wire.
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And now Mark Zuckerberg is saying, yeah, our fact checkers were too politically biased to the left,
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anti-Trump. And yeah, we probably should allow people to talk about immigration and the crazy
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trans stuff and all the rest of it. We weren't letting you do that before, but now we're going to have to.
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Why? Because Trump won. Why did Trudeau resign? Or why is he planning to resign? Because Trump won.
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Why is Mark Zuckerberg donating to the Trump inaugural fund? Why is Mark Zuckerberg changing
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the policies to stop punishing conservatives? Because Trump won. And he didn't just win an
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electoral college landslide. He won the popular vote. Mark Zuckerberg needs to do this in order to
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serve the market. Most people want Trump to be president. Also, Trump is president. Trump is
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in power. And he's not afraid to wield that power. And Mark Zuckerberg wants to be on the right side
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of the regulators. So some people are saying this isn't good enough. Mark Zuckerberg has been going
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after conservatives. And Facebook's been suppressing conservatives. And this isn't fair. And we
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shouldn't let him off the hook. He's not being sincere. I don't know. Maybe he's sincere. Maybe he's
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not. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg's some radical leftist. He's empowered radical leftists. But I
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don't think he's some radical. But I don't really care. I don't care whether this guy's sincere,
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if he's seen the light. I don't care at all. I care about what happens. I care about what he does.
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I'm elated. In fact, if Mark Zuckerberg is being disingenuous and cynical here and he's just trying
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to go where the wind is blowing, all the better. Because that is further evidence, proof positive if you
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ask me, that the political winds are blowing in the favor of conservatives, of real conservatives,
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of the kind of conservatives who don't just advance the position of Democrats, of the kind
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of conservatives who voted for Trump. We're winning. Exhibit Z. Exhibit number 3052. Things are going in
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our direction. Now, speaking of social media content, an extremely disturbing video made the rounds
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yesterday. It is a porn lady showing up to a five guys burger restaurant and propositioning the young
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man behind the counter. I just wondered, I can't just see it on the menu, but where do I get the five
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guys from? The five guys. I didn't know if it was like a special room or you can take me out back.
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No, I don't think that's happening. What, but after your shift? I mean, I'd want to give you,
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you know, a good rating. I'm a fishing man and I'm watching myself. I'm asking for what's on the
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menu, that's all. Genuinely, I feel like I'm doing that now. I can hand you a menu if you want.
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Are you on it? No, I'm not. Oh, that's a shame. Oh, that's a shame. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah.
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Where can I get the five guys? Ha ha ha. What a groaner. First of all, great on that young man.
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Great. He says, I'm a Christian. I'm waiting until marriage. Had I been his age, what is he,
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a teenager, early 20s? I was an atheist, agnostic in my teenage, early 20s. Had I been that guy,
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some lady walks in and propositions me? I don't know that I would have had the strength and
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maturity to say, no, thank you, lady. I'm a Christian man. I'm waiting until marriage. So
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huge props to that guy. This woman should maybe be arrested for soliciting fornication.
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She should, at the very least, be institutionalized because she's nuts.
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She could be prosecuted or otherwise discouraged for obscenity. There should obviously be many more
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regulations around pornography. This is a really gross woman, a really disgusting woman whose
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behavior should be curtailed by the culture and by the law. But that's not the most distressing
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aspect of this little video, of this whole phenomenon. It's not just this woman. It's not
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just this video. There's another porn lady who went viral. We talked about it on the show
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for having slept with 100 men in one day. And she says she wants to sleep with 1,000 men.
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But we should be clear here. That woman didn't go viral for sleeping with 100 men. She went viral
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for talking about sleeping with 100 men in a documentary and for talking about how in the
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future she might sleep with 100 men. In this case, this woman didn't go viral for creating some
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pornography. She went viral for going into a burger restaurant and debasing herself. I guess that to me
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seems the most depraved aspect of this whole new genre of reality show pornography, of only fans or
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individual kind of social media influencer porn, is that it has nothing to do with nudity. It has nothing
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to do with sex acts. It's even creepier than that. It's even more depraved than that. The content that's
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going viral, there's no shortage of naked ladies on the internet. The reason this woman and the woman
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previously who slept with 100 men, the reason they've gone viral has really very little to do
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with them taking their clothes off. It's them just talking about ways in which they have debased
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themselves. That's the porn. And it makes sense that in a culture in which nudity and obscenity is
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ubiquitous, totally saturated with porn, that people need something even more bizarre, even more depraved.
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And so what titillates here is the personal debasement of these women to walk into a five
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guys and proposition the kid behind the counter. That is a culture that is too obscene.
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And we need some guardrails back. And this is happening in my own state of Tennessee,
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regulating pornography. I mean, this is normal stuff. The libertarians and the leftists will
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raise a ruckus about it, say it's a bad idea to regulate pornography or something.
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We've always done that. And a culture that doesn't regulate this kind of obscenity
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is going to get to the point where we're so perverse that what really gets us going is just
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watching some depraved women talk about the various ways in which they might in the future
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or in the past have debased themselves. Gross. There's so much more to say. First though,
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wireless company. Speaking of moral questions, there is a new Archbishop of Washington. Just as
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President Trump is entering office, the Vatican has appointed a new Archbishop to Washington. This
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would be Robert Cardinal McElroy. Cardinal McElroy is the former Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco.
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He is considerably to the left of many people, as certainly to a prelates in the Catholic Church
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and the Catholic tradition. He is radically liberal and pro-LGBT. And he's just come out and said that
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mass deportations of the sort that President Trump is proposing are antithetical to the Catholic moral
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vision. He said, quote, we are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person
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and thus plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider indiscriminate mass of
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deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
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So we'll have to see what emerges in this administration.
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Now, I don't know if Cardinal McElroy is a history buff or anything, but I am a little bit. You know, I love
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Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered our hemisphere and an important man in the development of
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America. Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, which also marked the end of something known as
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the Reconquista. The Reconquista, which was the campaign of Spanish Catholics to retake land that
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Muslims had conquered about 781 years prior. The argument in America from the libs is we can't deport
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people on mass. Some of these people have been here for decades. Spain, led by Catholic monarchs,
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one of whom is in the process of being canonized, who is a servant of God, Queen Isabella,
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managed to boot out a whole lot of people who had been in the country for not just years or decades,
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but for 781 years, just booted them out at the end of the Reconquista. Because the Muslims invaded
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Iberia in 711 AD, and they gained a lot of ground. They tried to conquer all of Europe, but happily,
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Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, booted the Muslims out at the Battle of Poitiers,
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tours 150 miles outside of Paris. But the Muslims had Iberia for a very long time until the Christians
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started to take the land back. This all ended in 1492, and they gave them the boot. And then there
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were further waves of deportations of Muslims in the century that followed. Now, famously, Jews got
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caught up a little bit in the mix there. They also got the boot in 1492, though the Catholics mitigated
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this a little bit by allowing Jews who had been booted out of Iberia to settle in the papal states.
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It's a long story. But the Reconquista broadly targeted at Muslims. And in any case,
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one does not even need to defend the Reconquista, a very important event in the history of Christendom
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and Western civilization. But one does not even have to defend it to point out that what Cardinal
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McElroy is saying here is simply not true. To say that mass deportation is not in line with Catholic
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doctrine. One of the pivotal events in the history of Christendom, a policy undertaken by
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a servant of God, a woman who was put on this path to canonization recently in 1974 by a relatively
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liberal pope, Pope Paul VI, one of the two popes whose pontificate coincided with the Second Vatican
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Council. She undertook the policy, very important policy. I don't know. I'm a little,
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I'm a little skeptical, not of the position within the church of Cardinal McElroy, but of the political
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and moral claims he's making here. It doesn't seem to jive with Catholic history. Now, speaking of
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ages past, I was making this point yesterday on social media that in modernity, we seem to have
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gotten a few things wrong. Maybe we need to look toward the past. And someone said, well, Michael,
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are you kidding me? You want to look back to the dark ages? And the dark ages is a polemical term
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that's come up in modernity, mostly to attack Christianity. But it's unclear even what dark
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ages refers to. Some people use dark ages to refer specifically to the centuries immediately after the
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fall of Rome. So the latter half of the first millennium AD. Some use dark ages to refer to the
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whole middle ages. But I was thinking about it. People have this animus, this prejudice against the dark
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ages. And they think that we live in this enlightened new modern era. And the chief evidence
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that they posit is that we live longer today. During the early middle ages, people only lived
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into their 20s, maybe 30. Then in the later middle ages, they'd live into their 30s, maybe 40. And if
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you take infant mortality out of it, they might live into their 50s or even 60 or a little higher.
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But today we live to what? To our 70s? I looked this up. The global life expectancy today
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is about 73 and a half years. And I thought, okay, 73 and a half years, that's considerably longer.
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That's twice as long maybe as people lived during the middle ages. But then I said, well, hold on.
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What about abortion? Because in the middle ages, there was infant mortality. We've reduced infant
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mortality in principle today, except not really. Because now we just murder lots and lots of babies
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en masse. There was a number reported last week that 45 million babies are killed each year through
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abortion. But the World Health Organization reports the number is much higher. It says it's about 73 to
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75 million babies killed each year through abortion. So hold on. We count infant mortality when we're
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thinking about the life expectancy in the middle ages, but we don't count infant mortality and
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modernity because we want to pretend that infant mortality isn't really infant mortality because
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we want to pretend that infants aren't really infants. So what happens when you add in the abortions?
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A little tricky to calculate, but the global life expectancy today, without counting the abortions,
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is 73 and a half years. The global life expectancy with abortion, about 47 and a half years.
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And could be significantly lower even than that. Life expectancy by the high middle
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ages, 30 to 40. And if you survive childhood, 50 to 60. Which means the average life expectancy in
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modernity with all of our advantages is only slightly higher than it was during the high middle ages.
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What else do people say? Well, back in the middle ages, you just had to toil every single day. You
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never got any days off. It wasn't as luxurious as it is today. That is also just not true. People during
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the middle ages had much more time off work than we do today. During the middle ages, people had up to
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half a year off because of the liturgical feasts that were actually mandatory. You were not allowed
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to work on big feasts. So you could have up to half the year off. Today, what do people get off? Two
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weeks? I don't even really take vacation. We're not just talking about workers or people in the salt
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mines. We're talking about executives. We're talking about everybody. No one takes time off. Everyone's
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working all the time these days. And so you can't point to days off or vacation time.
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Well, people didn't get to travel. That's not true. People traveled a lot. Well, Canterbury Tales
00:20:06.080
opens up with the time of the year when people would go on pilgrimage. So they wouldn't go on
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to St. Croix, but they would go to pilgrimage to see some of the most beautiful works of art and
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architecture ever created. Much more beautiful than anything people are making today.
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Well, people in the middle ages, they had no hope. What are you talking about? People in the
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middle ages had much more hope than we do today. We're a despairing society. People today are taking
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depression pills. They're so without hope. One in five women takes depression pills because of the
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despair that she feels. In the middle ages, people had hope because the middle ages were not disenchanted
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because the middle ages were not atheistic and materialistic and so damn confused.
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Don't tell me that people in the so-called dark ages didn't have hope. They had significantly more
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hope than we have today. It reminded me that what most people think they know about the so-called
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dark ages or the middle ages broadly is just nonsense. And it's a cope. It's a way for those
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of us in modernity to pretend that we're living in the greatest time ever. You always hear from the
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liberals that we're living in the safest, least violent, most prosperous time ever.
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If you just look at people killed, especially if you include abortion,
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we live in the most violent, barbaric time ever in the history of the world.
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Okay? So when we're considering policies and even when we're thinking about morality vis-a-vis public
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life, please don't tell me that in the past everyone was so barbaric, but we figured it all out.
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Frankly, it seems that people in ages past understood things a lot better than we do. I'm not saying I
00:21:45.320
want to go back to medieval dentistry, but there are things we can learn from our ancestors. Now,
00:21:51.080
speaking of leisure and a little bit of fun, I want to tell you about the yes or no game. You've
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seen the show. Now you can join the fun. Yes or no. The yes or no game. Not just a show on the
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internet, but a game you can play with your friends. Mr. Davies, are you ready? Oh, I'm so ready.
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Here's a prompt. Protestants are doing more to push back against the radical left than Catholics.
00:22:12.940
Wow. That's a loaded question, huh? How would I answer?
00:22:18.120
I will like to say that Professor Jacob did pick the card and it is a good one. And I think you would
00:22:26.060
say no. You're right. I would say no today in the year of our Lord, 2025. If you had asked me that
00:22:34.740
question 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, I probably would have said yes because the
00:22:40.180
evangelicals were much tougher on the left than the Catholics who were politically relatively
00:22:45.540
disengaged. But I don't know. These days, it seems like the evangelicals got a little bit
00:22:49.860
squishy during 2020, George Floyd, all the rest of it. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
00:22:54.960
And the Catholics are getting a little tougher. Would you agree?
00:23:00.000
You do agree. There you go. All right. You got to figure out how you know your friends
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by getting the yes or no game. Last year, we released the Conspiracy Expansion Pack.
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Some have called the card game MKUltra. We did not stop there. We then unveiled the Politics,
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Philosophy, and Religion Expansion Pack, which others have described as like walking on foot
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from the Acropolis to Mecca with an ayahuasca IV drip while listening to a Jordan Peterson lecture
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all while fasting. Who writes this stuff? Wait, there's more. We're teasing an even wilder
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00:23:42.540
Speaking of light and darkness, California is on fire. There's a video really scary came
00:23:47.240
out yesterday on social media. Some guy in his home, his glass modern home in LA, just surrounded
00:23:54.340
by fire. You would hope that in this case, he could find a way to get out and not be filming
00:24:00.160
around there. But I don't know, he's just filming his house. I hope he survived. See a dog there.
00:24:05.180
Hope the dog survived. But this is scary stuff. I lived in LA for six, seven years and fires happen
00:24:11.700
regularly. This is not just a regular California fire. The whole city practically is on fire from
00:24:17.600
Pasadena to Malibu. It's just engulfing everything. And there's like no containment.
00:24:23.680
I texted a friend of mine who lives in Malibu last night. I said, how's it going? He said,
00:24:29.100
I'm evacuated. I said, is the fire contained? He goes, no. I think it was 0% contained.
00:24:36.140
The city going up in flames, another friend of mine out in LA, Akira Davis says,
00:24:40.700
it's been so dry. We can't clear brush. We can't clear brush near power lines,
00:24:45.420
homeless encampments with open flames everywhere. Four years of defund the police. This is the perfect
00:24:50.240
storm. And this gets to the political aspect of all this. This is not just nature. This is not
00:24:57.700
just what happens in LA. This is not just climate change or whatever. This fire is the result of
00:25:03.180
specific policies. There are reports now that the LA fire department is out of water, that fire hydrants
00:25:08.340
don't have any more water. That's a political problem. The mayor of Los Angeles is reportedly not
00:25:16.200
even in the city right now, might not even be on the continent right now. That same mayor cut the
00:25:23.100
police, the fire department budget in this fiscal year by almost $20 million. President Trump,
00:25:30.440
when he showed up to California some years ago, scolded Gavin Newsom, said, you need better forest
00:25:35.700
management practices here. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Just the homeless encampments.
00:25:42.260
Guess who starts these fires? I don't know who started this specific fire or how many of these
00:25:48.760
specific fires that we're seeing burn right now. The homeless start the fires generally because LA
00:25:54.100
allows the homeless people to live up in the very dry hills and they have open flames and often they
00:25:59.240
catch on fire and they burn zillions of acres of land. That's a political problem. That's not a natural
00:26:05.680
problem. The fires in California, we got to pray for the people. Hopefully they can contain this.
00:26:10.840
The political takeaway here is that lots of little rot can lead to big sudden fires. Lots of little
00:26:21.360
rot, little literal rot in wood, in brush, but lots of political rot. We're going to defund the fire
00:26:30.880
department. We're not going to manage our forests. We're going to build in places maybe we shouldn't
00:26:36.060
build. We're going to let vagrants have open flames in dangerous places. We're going to do this. We're
00:26:42.220
going to do that. Lots of little rot. We're not going to manage our water properly. We're going to
00:26:46.660
drain reservoirs. The list goes on. Can lead suddenly to really big fires. So I felt about BLM, which
00:26:57.060
literally burned cities to the ground. BLM was the result of lots of little rot. Lots of little rot on
00:27:06.500
how we talk about race in America, how we educate people, how we deal with criminals, how we let a lot
00:27:11.940
of criminals off the hook, how politicians indulge racial grievance, so on and so forth. How we don't
00:27:21.840
defend our police officers, how the establishment media lie about a criminal who was killed during an
00:27:28.000
arrest. On and on and on. All that little rot. It goes on for a while and you barely even notice it.
00:27:36.700
And then something ignites. And then the country burns for eight months while BLM rioters are looting
00:27:43.140
footlockers and torching cities. That's how these things work. And then the fire grows so large that you
00:27:51.380
think. It couldn't have possibly been because of this political decision or that little political
00:27:55.080
decision or this or that. But it is. It's the accumulation of all of this detritus. It's the
00:28:01.920
accumulation of all of this just rot. Sparks up. So if you don't want the big fires in the future,
00:28:09.780
you've got to deal with those individual little tiny problems as they come up. Now, turning from
00:28:15.600
California, turning a little bit southeast, President Trump wants to rename the body of
00:28:21.960
water that we presently call the Gulf of Mexico. President Trump, according to Washington Post and
00:28:27.680
other news reports, has proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And democracy dies in
00:28:35.360
darkness, Washington Post asks in the headline, can he do that? The president-elect told reporters
00:28:42.060
Tuesday that he wanted the body of water called the Gulf of America, but he provided no details on
00:28:46.100
how the change would be enacted. Can he do that? Yeah, he can. Why not? Why couldn't we do that?
00:28:54.700
The Gulf of Mexico is presently called the Gulf of Mexico in no small part because that's what we
00:29:00.440
call it. Yeah, we can rename it. Sure. Why not? It's at least as much our Gulf as it's Mexico's Gulf.
00:29:06.300
And we're America and Mexico is Mexico. Mexico is barely a real country. Yeah, we could do that.
00:29:13.120
When you travel to Arabia, I remember this, I was visiting a friend of mine in Arabia and I pulled
00:29:18.200
out my phone and I saw the Persian Gulf, except the Persian Gulf wasn't called the Persian Gulf.
00:29:22.180
It was called the Arabian Gulf because the Arabia doesn't like Persia, now known as Iran. So that body
00:29:28.600
of water that we call the Persian Gulf, they call it the Arabian Gulf. That's easy enough.
00:29:32.660
We're America. We can do things. We have some power. We have some influence. We're a pretty big
00:29:38.800
act. This is Trump's point. When he says things like, I want to rename the Gulf of Mexico,
00:29:44.260
the left and the squishes write him off as being frivolous or silly or proposing something that can't
00:29:51.160
even be done. Can he do that? In fact, the question, can he do that, is why Trump is proposing it.
00:29:57.980
It is a reminder, all this stuff, the proposal to buy Greenland, the jokes, are they jokes about
00:30:05.620
taking Canada, are the big parades, the 250th anniversary of America parade, the big military
00:30:13.440
parade during his first term. They're all answers to the question, can he do that? He wants these
00:30:19.620
reporters to ask, can he do that? To remind people, yes, we can. We are America. We can do things.
00:30:26.540
We don't need to just take orders from the rest of the world. We don't need to go quietly into the
00:30:32.260
night. We don't need to just throw up our hands and concede the greatness of our country.
00:30:39.980
We can do things. Can we rename a Gulf on our coast on a map? Yeah, duh. We're the global hegemon.
00:30:49.280
Yes, of course you could do that. Good grief. Well, what will the UN say? Who cares? Also,
00:30:55.780
the UN does what we say they do, because we're the global hegemon. Well, I don't know. I mean,
00:31:02.240
will the companies that produce the maps and the textbooks go? Yeah, how about we produce them?
00:31:07.780
Yeah, we're America. Yes, we can do that. We can do a lot more than that, too.
00:31:13.120
Are we going to buy Greenland? I don't know. Don Jr., the president's son,
00:31:17.260
has just posted a video where he's flying on Trump Force One into Nuke, Greenland,
00:31:26.980
just to pay a little visit to our neighbors to the Northeast.
00:31:31.040
Guys, where are we heading? We're heading to Greenland. Talk to the locals. Talk to people.
00:31:36.160
See what they think about America. Have a good time.
00:31:39.160
The whole town has shown up, I think, at the airports. Let's go to Greenland. Let's do it. Let's do it.
00:31:51.160
I mean, this is sort of my world as an outdoorsman, as someone who sort of travels to remote parts of the world.
00:32:06.800
Awesome trip to Greenland. Super warm welcome. People excited about Trump. They're excited about America.
00:32:12.000
I'm definitely looking forward to coming back and getting to spend a little bit more time on the ground myself.
00:32:17.440
Love it. I love this whole video. It was really smart to send Don. You saw sitting right next to Don is Charlie, Charlie Kirk.
00:32:25.500
Really kind of young, exciting people in the Trump movement.
00:32:29.080
And just after President Trump's talking about buying Greenland, they just happen to take a little trip.
00:32:34.020
Why not? You know, just a little boy's day in Greenland.
00:32:37.600
And when Don comes out there and he says, look, I'm an outdoorsman.
00:32:50.880
And when he goes and meets with the people of Greenland and they come up and they say, oh, man, we love you.
00:32:55.700
We love Trump. We love America. We want help from America.
00:32:59.480
And why did they take this trip and why did they release that video?
00:33:02.720
To counter the liberal narrative that Greenland hates us.
00:33:08.620
Greenland does not want to be controlled by America.
00:33:12.080
Why wouldn't they? Greenland's currently controlled by Denmark.
00:33:14.700
If you had the choice to be controlled by Denmark or America, the global hegemon, probably you'd go with the latter, right?
00:33:21.420
And, you know, things are tough for some of us in Greenland and we'd love support from America.
00:33:28.660
I don't know who came up with this video, but whoever did is a genius.
00:33:31.560
And Don does a fabulous job in it, which is just to show, hey, we're going to cut through the media BS here.
00:33:38.640
We're going to cut through the dishonest leftist media that is presenting an image to you.
00:33:56.260
We can go visit Greenland, have a nice boys weekend in Greenland.
00:34:02.560
The U.S. State Department's been talking about it for over 150 years.
00:34:07.740
Again, we in America can do things, and we can grow, and we can expand, and we can be strong, and we can throw our weight around, and maybe we can even be great again.
00:34:21.160
Now, of more immediate concern beyond the Gulf of Mexico, sorry, Gulf of America, or Greenland, is the Panama Canal.
00:34:32.740
President Trump has proposed reasserting control of the Panama Canal, and the libs are losing their minds over this.
00:34:44.240
We controlled the Panama Canal entirely until Jimmy Carter gave it away in the 1970s for no reason.
00:34:49.440
During that time, conservatives were a little bit split.
00:34:51.740
There was a famous debate between William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan over whether or not to give the canal to Panama.
00:34:58.900
Buckley was in favor of giving the canal to Panama.
00:35:01.940
Reagan said it would be a bad idea to give the canal to Panama, and Reagan was right.
00:35:07.620
And also, we are within our legal rights to retake that canal, and here's why.
00:35:13.420
Paul Du Canoy at the New York Post has a really good article about this.
00:35:16.560
When we gave the canal back to Panama, this extremely crucial strategic commercial national security matter, we did so with treaties.
00:35:28.540
And the treaties gave various stipulations, including that Panama has to continue to operate the canal.
00:35:36.140
Panama cannot just give the canal away to someone else, but that's exactly what Panama did.
00:35:40.540
Panama gave the canal away, and not just anyone.
00:35:42.140
They gave the canal away to China, possibly our biggest geopolitical adversary.
00:35:46.580
In 96, Panama decides, it's like 20 years after the Panama Canal Treaty, Panama decides to outsource management of the entry ports to a Hong Kong-based company.
00:35:57.040
Now, at that time, in 96, Hong Kong was controlled by the British.
00:36:01.320
So we said, okay, the British, they're sort of an appendage of the American empire anyway.
00:36:07.120
Problem is, in 1997, I remember it clearly, the Brits gave Hong Kong back to China, which was also a stupid thing to do, but they did that.
00:36:16.380
So now, all of a sudden, you've got the Panama Canal being controlled by an entity that is controlled by China.
00:36:27.340
So that means China effectively controls the Panama Canal.
00:36:31.240
That is an unacceptable national security risk.
00:36:33.740
It violates the 1977 treaty, which demanded Panamanian operational control of the canal, which is to say that Trump's policy here is extremely mainstream.
00:36:48.020
Trump's threat to retake the Panama Canal is not lawless, quite the opposite.
00:36:53.980
It's not a fringe idea, it's a very mainstream idea.
00:36:58.700
So much of what Trump suggests, you know, we're going to take Greenland, or we're going to reclaim the Panama Canal, is being reported in the press as the crazy ravings of a madman who knows nothing about American law or American history.
00:37:12.640
Trying to buy Greenland is as American as apple pie.
00:37:15.860
We've been trying to do it since the 19th century.
00:37:20.080
And the Panama Canal is as American as apple pie, too.
00:37:22.880
And pretty soon, the Gulf of Mexico is going to be as American as apple pie.
00:37:26.880
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00:37:35.400
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00:37:38.800
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00:37:51.040
My favorite comment yesterday is from Christian Solid, 1702, who says,
00:37:55.460
The problem with Canada being the 51st state is that they normally vote liberal.
00:38:07.040
We can control them, but they don't have any vote.
00:38:15.300
You know, they'll be like the helots of our civilization.
00:38:23.640
We need to be talking about how the 1% don't pay their fair share of taxes.
00:38:27.520
I said, Well, you've got to expand your imagination, man.
00:38:30.820
What if the Greenlanders just pay all of our taxes?
00:38:38.320
Those Canadians have a lot to pay for up in America's evil top hat.
00:38:42.220
At least that's the starting point of our negotiation.
00:38:49.220
Now, the Democrat line is to pretend that all of this is frivolous.
00:38:52.160
All this talk about resources in Greenland or the Panama Canal.
00:38:58.600
Eric Swalwell, a man who briefly ran for president
00:39:03.060
and is most famous for allegedly sleeping with a Chinese spy
00:39:06.940
and making strange noises during a cable news interview.
00:39:13.060
I don't care if Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland.
00:39:15.420
I just want to know what he's going to do to lower the cost of groceries.
00:39:24.840
Because it's an admission that the Inflation Reduction Act
00:39:28.460
that Eric Swalwell voted for three years ago didn't work.
00:39:37.180
Usually in politics, a question like this is not sincere.
00:39:43.400
Usually in politics, a question like this is just a kind of rhetorical jab.
00:39:52.660
Eric Swalwell's party has been running the government for four years.
00:39:55.400
In this case, Eric Swalwell voted for a piece of legislation
00:39:58.380
that was supposed to fix the problem that Eric Swalwell is admitting
00:40:02.840
In this case, the question almost seems sincere.
00:40:05.940
It's like, hey, can you please tell me how to lower prices?
00:40:12.840
So can you, Mr. Trump, sir, can you please lower the cost of my eggs?
00:40:22.180
Because Congress hasn't had a raise in nine years.
00:41:44.660
but they're usually funded by leftists and Democrats.
00:41:48.940
for ousted, squishy GOP consultants and writers.
00:41:53.460
So the editor-in-chief of one of these outlets,
00:42:18.740
that he cares about free expression in the abstract.
00:43:17.900
these guys have such a personal grudge against him.
00:43:20.720
They said Trump will never appoint pro-life judges.
00:44:27.320
Is it because he had some massive change of heart?
00:45:18.200
Now, I'm very excited to have a guest on the show,